Sarah Freeman, of Shapwick near Glastonbury, become infamous in Victorian England as a former whore turned evil murderess who poisoned members of her family.

Hanged for the murder of her brother in 1845, she had also faced allegations of killing her child, her husband and mother.

She was also implicated in the deaths of at least five others, although these were never investigated.

While she emphatically claimed her innocence until the very end, the motive of the four deaths – at least in her troubled mind – is likely to have been necessity.

Life was certainly cheap in Victorian times and the murder of her husband, who had recently joined a burial club, gave Sarah Freeman a windfall which was to take her eventually to London.

Inquests had declared the death of her husband and her son, born out of wedlock years before she met her husband, as victims of English cholera.

However, once the money was spent she was back in Somerset and begging to be allowed to return to the bosom of her family at Shapwick.

But her previous tarnished reputation went before her and the family resisted.

Undeterred, she returned to Shapwick, immediately causing arguments in the house of her parents and brothers.

Within days her mother had also died, making her the only female in the house and therefore she was temporarily allowed to stay.

That was until her brother Charles informed the family of his intention to wed and bring his bride to the cottage, making Sarah redundant.

Neighbours later testified to the threats Sarah made around the village to her brother, threats which she seemingly carried through on Boxing Day when Charles fell ill, later dying in the same circumstances as their mother.

Suspicions fell on Sarah and exhumation and post mortem examinations were later carried out in the porch of Shapwick Church, proving all four victims had died of arsenic poisoning.

An enthralled public followed the goings-on through articles published on the front pages of newspapers across the land, even The Times updated its readers on the evidence.

On the day she was hanged, it is thought 11,000 travelled to witness her sorry end.